Summer Camp 2014 - #3 aka Farm Camp

Vern attended year two of farm camp recently. He had a great time as usual. (Thanks everyone!)

My sister did comment "Boy I forgot how boys that age eat." She needed a loan to feed him for the week. :-)

Vern did comment that by the end of the week he was tired of pizza.

Some other activities for the week included riding motorcycles. No Vern did not ride his own!

He also rode 4 wheelers and had some fun with his older cousin.

He got quite a few bug bites in bad places. (You just can't spray that thing....)


Sis did say he fed the animals and did some chores.

Finally they did some fishing. That guy is still in my freezer!

Vern had a good end to his summer and now it is back to learning at school...

Back to school shopping - BLACK WEEKEND

If you have never had to back to school shop for kids consider yourself LUCKY, as in winning the lottery lucky.  These first few weeks of August are terrible. Stay far away from the office and school supply isles in stores. Don't go clothing shopping in kids or juniors areas of department stores. This is my warning to you!  It is just as bad as black Friday. Yes you heard me right.  To make it worse the only time this event fell into our schedule was on tax-free weekend. That equates to oh about a bazillion more people in the stores just to save 8% on their purchases.

There are mobs of people. A lot of times on black Friday there are only occasional children but during back to school shopping you have all the parents and all the children as the children just H-A-V-E to select their own pencils and pens for an unbelievably long list of school supplies needed each year.  Oh don't go thinking just because they had a pencil box last year that they can in way use the same pencil box this year.

1. The kids would be laughed at and made complete fun of if they came to school with last years "stuff".
2. The teachers/schools require completely different supplies from one grade to the next.

So here we are in the midst of the mob looking for: book bags, pens, pencils, paper, folders, trapper keepers, planners, composition notebooks, calculators....on and on. Trying to get everything shoved into a shopping cart so the next mob can make their way down the isle. BUT WAIT...on top of all that you need to do your best price comparison shopping. They hide the sales items and have the expensive stuff prominently displayed.  Yes, there is a large price variance on items. One set of pencils $2 - next pile same set of pencils in different packaging $4.  You grab the wrong thing...double the price and with 10,000 people in same isle as you it is very easy to get the wrong item or the most expensive item.

After that traumatic experience we have yet to get the first day of school new outfit. This requires one store for the boy and 16 stores for the girl. Finally, after an exhausting day we complete our mission and head home exhausted with germs. Yes both Ann and I caught colds from this mess.


Next I am moving onto public school itself. When childless people say its a free education, they have absolutely NO idea what they are talking about. Public school is SO FAR FROM FREE it is not even funny.  So on top of the new clothes, shoes and school supplies I now need to write checks for things such as:
Ipad "insurance"
Activity passes
Lunches
Additional check to be in activities
Plus another check for clothing to be in activities listed above

Each item requires a separate check. The kids each start school with about 5 checks for this and that. Ann lost one of her $75 checks but a nice lady found it and called me. THANK YOU good Samaritan.

No, you can not go shopping for good deals on these items. You must just smile, bend over and write a check for whatever dollar amount the school says.

That my friends is back to school time for parents.

Vacation 2014

I debated on which of my blogs I would post this and I decided here this time. Let's get going on our family vacation 2014!!!

Because of all the hail damage and expenses we all decided to go on a smaller vacation this year but in place of fanciness the kids were allowed each to bring a friend.  A very relaxing fun vacation was had by all as you will see by the photos that follow.

First off, as we are driving I just had to have a picture of this water tower. It is the absolute coolest water tower I have ever seen - an 8 ball!~! The water towers around here are all boring compared to this one.

I also "had" to include this photo as it is a joke. On every family vacation we have gone on with Superman he ends up intentionally or not taking us down some spooky out of the way gravel/dirt/other type of road. This year was no exception! :-)

Next we are onto swimming.  I don't know what is going on with this child but she decided eating rocks was fun.

Superman tried and tried but this was the closest photo we could get of all 4 kids looking at us...we got 3. They had a beautiful day to swim while I lounged on the beach in the shade.

No matter what I tried on this photo the blog turned it sideways. Even when I uploaded it was horizontal until I brought it into the blog so we will have to live with the photo the wrong direction. Even with that you can see the kids were all getting along great and having fun with the bunk beds.  NO they did not sleep like this!!!

Next we are going fishing!  We even got the girls to fish and Ann caught her very first fish ever. You can see them holding it here. Right after this shot was taken the fish decided to "beeee freee". He leaped out of their grasp and went flying through the air landing on my second toe spearing it as it landed. Blood gooshed from my toe. Ann's friend ran to get paper towels. I am healing and that was the worst injury on the trip.

Here is Vern with one of his MASSIVE  catches.  Hey ~ at least they were catching fish.

Here is a much nicer sized fish for a photo.

I am including this next photo because I think it is a great photo of Vern's friend!!! He and Vern had a great time doing boy stuff. Yes, we let them do a bit of playing on games in the evening...

I also included this next shot as it is my favorite of those silly boys of mine. They were chilaxin in the hammock. I could barely pry Superman out of the thing!!!

                                     

Next is Vern on one of the zip-lines. The proprietors were very safety oriented and no one was going to fall out of their lines!

Next is a shot of the two younger guys relaxing in that same hammock.  It was the favorite thing to do after zip lining.

And here we have rock eater posing for some crazy reason. No wonder her and Ann get along so well both are drama princesses!

Another zip line shot of the kids having fun.

Here is a nice shot of Ann on the zip line. She of course thought it was not nearly exciting enough. My dare-devil and fearless child.  She is so beautiful in this photo. (Yes I am biased just go with it k?)

I will end with this scenic shot of the lake the kids swam in. It was so peaceful and not crowded. I loved the afternoon we spent here.

Now back to work and reality...vacation is over.

Summer Camp 2014 - #2

Vern was home for one night and then off to summer camp #2. This was a Boy Scout Camp near Medicine Mountain in South Dakota.

There were many hurdles for this trip. First his dad backed out at the last minute. This did not leave us any time to arrange for Superman to go. Coincidence? I think not.

Next Vern's second day there entailed a long trip to town to a doctor!~~!!!  Vern's allergies were acting up so badly he said that his throat was getting tight. So in addition to his normal allergy medication, he got additional nasal spray plus Benedryl. He was stuffy the entire trip. I heard from another mom that the pine trees were pollinating so I am guessing that is what made Vern so stuffy and miserable.

Then it was onto the bug bites. Camp number 1 left him with chiggers and bug bites on his legs so on camp #2 he scratched and scratched until they bled. He may have some scars with those horrible bites.  When he got home I had him use hydrocortizone and now he is doing better.

Rain, storms and more rain. There were thunderstorms every single day of his camp. Not fun but he managed. It was also cold.

Yes there is more!

Vern had a run in with some nails in a board in tall grass. He wasn't wearing his boots as they had given him some nasty blisters so he just had on his running shoes. Well you guessed it, Vern was walking through the tall grass and bam. He stepped on the board containing the nails and one punctured his foot. Thank goodness it didn't go all the way through his foot! He had a nasty hole in the bottom of his foot and a limp for a few days.

Next was the bad food. If Vern says the food is bad, it is BAD!  He said some of the food was expired for 3 years.  The Oreo cookies had green stuff in the middle instead of the normal white.  Thank goodness his tent mate had a lot of snacks and was willing to share.

Finally Vern was home but that is not the end of the story.


Vern had been away from mom for 2 weeks so he had none of her "Eat your vegetables." "Don't eat so much junk food."  or the infamous... "Eat that crap and you won't be able to poop!"  Yep I get home from work on Tuesday night and the tummy was hurting. Vern was also having issues going P. Finally we got tired of the screaming and took him to Children's ER. We arrived around 10:30 pm. You know how ER's are...wait-wait-wait.

Doc finally sees Vern and we take an x-ray. Vern is all backed up. He gets his first enema in his life and low and behold it does not work!!!! We get a prescription and head home. Finally climb into bed around 3:15 am. Talk about a short night... Zzz  Here is a photo of Vern in his hospital garb.

Happy Pooping!!!!

Summer Camp 2014 #1

Summer camp #1

Well Vern is back from his first camp of the summer. This was confirmation camp through the church. As you can see from the photos below it is a lot more than studying the Bible. It is fun together time with great counselors. 

I asked Vern so what did you learn?  His typical response, "Oh stuff I all ready knew like God loves you."

This year they got to stay in a new building - more of a dorm style. This was much nicer than the old sheds converted into sleeping quarters they had in prior years.  Vern did say he did not like his counselor and one time a counselor hit a boy. I don't know what was all up with that but plan on looking further into that.

This week Vern is off to Summer camp #2. I do not know if I will get any photos from that camp out but will be sure to update how it went.

Paddle boating -

Fishing - Vern said they only got to fish for a short time and the other kids kept catching his line. No fish either. :-(

Vern is the second kid on the high ropes. He ended up with a nasty scrape down the front of his leg from falling once.

Zipping down the line at the end - always fun!